Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 362

Chapter 362: Chapter 366: A Case Chapter 362: Chapter 366: A Case Alice walked away joyfully, looking completely unsuspecting–after all, she was just a child.

The old caretaker stood at the cemetery gate for a long time, watching the direction in which Alice had disappeared. It took him a while to snap back to reality, and then his fingers trembled slightly as he reached into the pocket on his chest, pulling out a vial of medicine and pouring it into his mouth.

He felt much better.

“This is too sinister… must report to the cathedral right away… God of Death above… this is too sinister…”

Muttering to himself, the old man quickly turned and walked towards the guardhouse. After entering, he closed the door, headed straight to the old-looking, ordinary desk beside the bed–after lifting a cover on the desk, a complex network of pipes, valves, buttons, and handles were revealed below.

Several metal capsule compartments quietly lay next to the pipes in their slots.

The old man took a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, sat down, and began swiftly writing a report. He then rolled it up and stuffed it into the metal capsule compartment, opened a hidden pipe in the desk, and placed the capsule into a slot.

“May Bartok bless these pipes and the flowing air within… May the operation of the valves be smooth, without jams, pressure leaks, or bursts–may the sorting center's differential machine not malfunction.”

The old man quietly prayed briefly, then pressed a button next to the pressure pipe. After a green light in the hidden compartment lit up, he pulled the handle next to the button.

A strange gurgling sound came from deep within the pipes, sounding like the noise made when airflow is blocked, but it quickly vanished, and the hissing of the normally operating pressure pipes and the fast-sliding of the capsule mechanism followed.

The old man glanced at the pipes with some concern, muttering, “It can't be because the report mentions the existence of higher beings, affecting the machine…”

After a while, two green lights signifying the “express mail” had reached the higher sorting center lit up, and the old caretaker finally set his mind at ease and closed the hidden compartment cover.

Alice hugged a large paper bag as she walked down the street, curiously looking around at the buildings, and observing the life in this city that was so different from Prand.

Inside the paper bag were items she had just bought from a corner store–some vegetables, eggs, frozen solid butter, and two pieces of lamb, which were the ingredients for today's lunch.

Alice was already able to shop on her own, although not very deftly, and she occasionally mistook the amount of change, but she kept learning every day–progressing, though not much.

She lowered her head slightly, one hand holding the paper bag, while the other pulled out a note from the bag to confirm the contents of the note.

Scrawled in wobbly handwriting were some letters, today's shopping list–one part of which consisted of words she could read and write, while the other part was substituted with simple drawings–she had taken great efforts to write this list herself.

Planning daily menus, planning the ingredients to buy, writing shopping lists, going to the store herself–trying to accurately calculate the change and then making sure to be back home on time. If all could be done, the captain would be very pleased.

Alice would be pleased too.

After confirming that everything in the list and the bag was correct, Miss Doll contently tucked away the note and continued walking towards her temporary residence on Oak Street.

But just as she was halfway there, a stir from a street corner suddenly caught her attention.

She looked up towards the direction of the noise, seeing about a dozen people gathered beside an old-looking residential building, some people pointing upward at the building, all of them chattering about something, with phrases like “that woman's gone mad,” “poor soul,” “even the church is alarmed” occasionally being heard.

Alice couldn't help but slow down, slower and slower, until she finally stopped, looking in that direction with great hesitation.

This was a commotion–The captain had said not to join commotions lightly; because if her head fell off in a crowd, the commotion would be too great.

But it did look very interesting over there, and the topics they were discussing… seemed to be the kind of content the captain would be interested in.

Alice was torn and, amidst her indecisiveness, took a step towards the scene, then another.

“I'll just go to see what's happening… I'm gathering information for the captain… This isn't joining a commotion aimlessly; it's joining very seriously…”

Alice applied all her intelligence to convince herself, and then she succeeded.

With one hand pressing her head and the other the paper bag, Miss Doll quickly joined the crowd, looking up at the residential building alongside them.

Unlike the temporary residence of the captain, the building before their eyes appeared older and more cramped. The narrow windows and external gas pipelines seemed suffocatingly congested, indicating that many separate households were gathered within the structure.

The discussions of the surrounding crowd were chaotic. Having listened for a long time and still not understanding what was happening, Alice carefully tapped on the shoulder of the person next to her and politely asked, “Excuse me, what happened here?”

The person next to her was startled but relaxed after seeing that the speaker was just a young girl wearing a veil, and pointed upwards, “A woman went insane, insisting she killed her husband and even tried to strangle her own child. The sheriff was alerted first, and now even the church officials are here–it seems like this won't end simply.”

Right after his words fell, another person chimed in, “Speaking of which, the church folks are here. Could it really be something ominous?”

“Let's hope it doesn't turn into a big ordeal,” a woman muttered among the crowd. “I live just below them; if something really happens, we won't have anywhere to go…”
“No matter what, it's best to go to the church today, to have the priest help with an exorcism. It's always good to be cautious.”

The crowd started discussing fervently again, and soon the topic shifted to areas Alice couldn't understand. She zoned out amid the tumultuous chatter, her gaze slowly drifting upwards.

Thin, drifting lines floated into her view, with many more extending from the nearby residential buildings, dancing gently in the air like swaying strands of hair, quietly stirring the sky.

Suddenly, Alice blinked.

She noticed that those drifting lines above the City-State seemed especially surreal and transparent, even flickering like a faulty electric light.

In the old apartment building emanating a faint moldy scent, the ancient plumbing system leaked somewhere, intermittently sending dripping sounds to one's ears. Dressed in black and equipped with batons and lanterns, the guards congregated in the living room, making the already cramped space feel even more confined.

A woman with disheveled long hair cowered in the corner of the sofa, her head bowed as if startled, occasionally muttering indistinct sentences.

Two black-clad guards stood beside her, watching over the mentally disturbed woman.

The guards were inspecting the remaining clues in the house, having already been busy for two hours.

A gust of Grey Wind blew down the corridor at that moment, swirling through the open door into the living room.

The guards paused their work and saluted the grey-white whirlwind.

Agatha stepped out from the vortex, scanning the room.

“How are things now?” she lifted her head, looking at the highest-ranking guard on the scene.

The captain of the guards, a tidy woman with black ear-length hair, stepped forward in response to the question, “We've collected a small amount of 'mud' samples from the bathroom floor, confirming it's consistent with the samples previously collected.”

“Prime Element…” Agatha murmured softly, then frowned, “A small sample? How much? Just that?”

“About a test tube's worth,” the short-haired female captain gestured with her hand. “That's all we have found–we've searched the entire building, and only the bathroom floor had some remains.”

Agatha pondered silently, then turned to look at the long-haired woman curled up in the corner of the sofa.

“Is she the responsible party?”

“Yes,” the squad leader nodded, “She rents here, and we have checked her background. She has no criminal record and is an agent accountant at a nearby firm. Moreover, her husband used to work in the Fervent Gold Mine–records show he died in a mining disaster three years ago.”

Fervent Gold Mine… mining disaster…
Perhaps influenced by recent events, Agatha's attention was instinctively caught by these words. After steadying herself, she approached the woman who continuously mumbled incoherently.

“Ma'am–I am the Gatekeeper of the City-State, and you are safe now,” Agatha spoke in a calm voice, gently using the power to soothe the mind, “Tell me, what exactly happened?”

Upon hearing her voice, the trembling in the long-haired woman's body abruptly stopped. Then, after mumbling unclearly again, she suddenly looked up.

A pair of eyes, still brimming with fear and insanity, stared intently at Agatha.

“He came back, he came back… I killed him, I killed that monster… In the bathroom! It's melting in the bathroom!”

Chapter end

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